This year has been odd in regards to honey production. We would normally harvest wildflower honey early June and sourwood honey in July, but June was a bust. We ended up with one medium plastic frame that wouldn’t seat in the extractor and one large frame that fell apart and dumped all the comb inContinue reading “Honey Refractometer”
Category Archives: Pests – Bees
50 Hives and Counting….
According to Hubby’s spreadsheet, 50 hives going into the spring nectar flow is the magic number at which the apiary will become financially viable, based on honey sales alone. We weren’t there at the start of spring this year, and probably won’t harvest any more honey this year as we’re letting our hives keepContinue reading “50 Hives and Counting….”
Strong hives, fewer small hive beetles.
Changes: We’ve made a few changes this year which have led to stronger hives. We did complete inspections on 75% of the hives at the end of last week and saw maybe 20 small hive beetles in total. Since moving here, we’ve seen that many in the lids of the hives in the worse cornerContinue reading “Strong hives, fewer small hive beetles.”
Our biggest harvest yet – 95 lbs of honey.
Spring was good to us with its profusion of blackberry blossoms which yielded hives full of pale and delicious honey. We put our daughter and her boyfriend, JI, in bee suits for the first time and had them smoking and brushing bees, which they greatly enjoyed. (I’m glad that I was the only one whoContinue reading “Our biggest harvest yet – 95 lbs of honey.”
Bee Safe!
Once again we’re under a tornado watch, but the danger is a lot less than a month ago. We should be out from under the thunderstorms by this afternoon. Meanwhile, I’m sitting here looking at the rivulets running along the side of the drive and at our beautiful grassy area going across to the wellContinue reading “Bee Safe!”
What an odd year!
Beekeeping this year has been very different than the previous four years. The rain and the tree-felling across the creek eliminated the usual summer dearth here at the farm, but the bees have been bringing in so much nectar they haven’t been converting as much as usual to honey. It’s a good problem toContinue reading “What an odd year!”
Slowly Moving West
We have started taking plants and boxes of household goods to the farm — just what will fit in the vehicles each time and what we have had time to pack. Most of the bee stuff is down there now, which makes getting around in the 40-foot container challenging! Still, the bees are rapidlyContinue reading “Slowly Moving West”
Lazer Creek Apiary 